This kind of aid keeps people alive and tries to maintain their dignity as human beings.

It is a life support system - and everyone knows what happens when a life support machine is switched off.

But short-term emergency aid - while more often on our television screens - is far from the whole picture.

Long-term development aid to Africa is less visible, but it counts for a much bigger chunk of global aid spending. The bulk of it is given by Western governments.

At its best, this kind of aid can play a vital role in helping poor countries to work their way out of poverty.

Education key

I am thinking of a six-year-old girl called Lucy, neatly dressed in a green school uniform, picking her way through the litter and sewage-strewn alleyways of Mathare, one of Kenya's most notorious slums.

Thanks to British aid, Lucy and hundreds of children like her have escaped the violent streets of Nairobi where children as young as six are known to have contracted HIV and Aids.

Thanks to British aid, Lucy is in primary school and has the chance of a life.

In Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia, as well as Kenya, millions of children are now going to school, because of money provided by international aid and debt relief.

Even today it could be much improved, to focus more on the Africa's very poorest, but it is moving in the right direction.

And of course, for aid to work properly, African governments receiving it must be committed to improving life for their poorest citizens.

Aid can play its part here too, in strengthening African government institutions, funding the fight against corruption, empowering African civil society groups to call their own governments to account.

In Malawi, for example, education groups funded by Oxfam now check whether schools receive the textbooks and chalk promised to them in the government budget, and they report their findings in the media and in parliament.

Fair chance

Democracy is steadily spreading in sub-Saharan Africa, with elections in 44 out of 50 countries in the past decade.

Independent television and radio stations are being established across the continent.

Aid can play a major role in strengthening this trend.

It can also - by funding small loan schemes as Oxfam does in countries as far apart as Rwanda and Mauritania - foster the incredible entrepreneurial drive in Africa.

If aid to Africa were cut, all this would be dead in the water.

Rich country aid to Africa currently stands at around $23bn (around £13bn) a year, hardly a lot of money when you compare it to the billions spent on the war in Iraq.

Aid now needs to be doubled if Africa is to tackle poverty head-on. Its debts need to be cancelled and the rules of world trade made fair.

Only then will Africa have a fair chance to compete.

Only then will Africa's outstanding human potential and natural riches really come into their own.

This article was written to coincide with BBC Two's If... We Stop Giving Aid to Africa, to be broadcast on Sunday, 26 June, 2005, at 1900 BST on BBC Two.